"DURBAN, South Africa — World temperatures keep rising, and are heading for a threshold that could lead to irreversible changes of the Earth, the U.N. weather office said Tuesday."
"AUSTIN, TEXAS — The nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, earlier this year caused many countries to rethink their appetite for nuclear power. It is also, in subtler ways, altering the fraught discussion of what to do with nuclear plants’ wastes."
"Radioactive substances from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have now been confirmed in all prefectures, including Uruma, Okinawa Prefecture, about 1,700 kilometers from the plant, according to the science ministry."
"The officials from around the world who will gather in South Africa on Monday to convene the latest round of U.N. climate negotiations are facing an uncomfortable fact: The global pact that has dictated greenhouse-gas targets since 1997 may no longer be relevant.
The mandatory targets of the Kyoto Protocol cover less than a third of the world’s carbon output. Major emitters are not bound by it. And, increasingly, the world is relying on a patchwork of measures rather than a universal treaty to lessen the impacts of global warming.
"Here we go again. Once more on the eve of a major United Nations negotiating session on climate change, an anonymous commenter has posted thousands of emails between scientists online. Climate change critics have already latched onto the emails as "Climategate 2.0." Much like the first iteration of the manufactured controversy, the commenter released the emails with a selection of short, out-of-context quotes designed to make scientists look nefarious."
"BEIJING — With global climate talks set to begin next week, China on Tuesday issued the most comprehensive document yet on its plans and negotiating positions on emissions."
"The nonnative amphibians pose a threat, but efforts to ban them pit environmentalists against Asian Americans, who relish them."
"Namie, JAPAN — Eight months ago, people left this place in haste. Families raced from their homes without closing the front doors. They left half-finished wine bottles on their kitchen tables and sneakers in their foyers. They jumped in their cars without taking pets and left cows hitched to milking stanchions.
Now the land stands empty, frozen in time, virtually untouched since the March 11 disaster that created a wasteland in the 12-mile circle of farmland that surrounds the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
"Ahead of critical talks and despite pledge for new treaty by 2012, biggest economies privately admit likelihood of long delay."
"In a direct act of rebellion against Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the local government in Tokyo is moving swiftly to build a huge natural gas facility that would generate as much electricity as a nuclear reactor."
